


I Write Myself In Binary

by Square_Orange



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Androids, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-09
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-01-15 02:30:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1287928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Square_Orange/pseuds/Square_Orange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson is one of the few humans alive to have merged with an android. It's not as wonderful as the movies would have you believe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tick Tock

October 14 2007 

The first battle drones are commissioned for use in the Afghan war.

July 25 2008 

Battle drones show the first signs of being semi-sentient- capable of basic emotion; displaying loyalty similar to that of a dog to its owner, all without programming. They show despair over fallen comrades. They try to save other drones even when there is no hope of rebooting them. They listen to the whims of local children and bring them paper and pencils from the field supplies.

September 3 2009, 21:02 local time 

Captain John H. Watson is shot in his left shoulder.

September 4 2009, 00:09 local time 

Captain John H. Watson is pronounced dead.

September 4 2009, 14:54 local time 

Captain John H. Watson wakes up.

* * *

 

It is generally accepted that life consists of a string of events in chronological order which elicit emotional responses, which in turn allow us to learn from experience. John Watson, therefore, was correct in his belief that what he was experiencing would not be classed as a conventional "life".

14 December 2009, 15:32 local time 

"Nothing happens to me."

"Then it's up to you to change that. Meet someone. Take up a hobby. It'll help to take your mind off things."

He gave her a sideways smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Right. Yep."

It was good advice, he knew that, but _Lord_ was Ella asking a lot of him. For _months_ he had been trying to get used to "civilian life". He had the freedom to eat what he wanted, sleep when he wanted, he could get a job, or a girlfriend. He could take up drinking like Harry had, or gamble his meagre pension away like his uncle George had.

He didn't.

He ate whatever he could stomach. He would walk around outer London's less charming streets for half an hour at 10 o'clock. Pop into Tesco's for milk and a microwave dinner. Wobble home and sit in one spot until half past six when he would pick through said dinner and nudge the rest around his plate. He would try to watch some mind-numbing television but would end up shutting off whatever programme was on in frustration way before it was finished. His attempts at sleep followed. He aimed for the recommended eight hours, but was always woken early by images of blood and missing limbs, all surrounded by dust and noise and an ominous _ticking_.

The unfaltering _tick tock tick tock_  continued into his waking hours, but by then he had taught himself to shove it to the periphery of awareness. Its monotonous consistency had caused torturous headaches in the first two weeks back from Afghanistan. Thankfully, they began to wear off as John came to terms with it. It was not going to stop until the day he died.

Shut down?

English vocabulary had not advanced far enough to accommodate John's unique circumstances.

Stopped?

That was a nice middle ground, he supposed.

January 29 2010, 10:58 local time 

"John! John Watson!"

Avoiding old friends took a kind of social skill that he didn't have. John begrudgedly turned back to Mike as he reintroduced himself. He didn't seem to have noticed the cane as he launched into conversation.

"I heard you were away gettin' shot at. What happened?"

John blinked disbelievingly. Mike was never the most observant guy. "I got shot."


	2. Bright

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Sherlock meet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've finally returned to writing, and I give you this as my first offering. Needed to ease myself back in.  
> The dialogue is based off what I can remember of the episode, and some bits are jumbled up.  
> There'll be one more chapter dedicated to ASiP, and then I'll take it away a bit.

January 29 2010, 11:27 local time

The labs they passed on their way to meeting this mystery flatmate-suitor had transformed into something vaguely science-fiction in the time John had been away. He stopped to peer through windows on more than one occasion to ogle the new equipment and computers.

“Don’t suppose you’d let me play around with some of this stuff later, Mike?”

“I don’t see why not.” He laughed and gestured to John’s left side. “Thinking of upgrading?” he asked jokingly.

A tight smile was enough to have Mike deflate and move swiftly on down the corridor.

The computer lab they ended up in was one John vaguely recognised as his old programming classroom, but it had been massively upgraded along with the rest of the facility.

"Bit different from my day..."

It was occupied by a single person who was seemingly attacking a keyboard. Without offering any kind of greeting-

“Mike, can I borrow your phone? There’s no signal on mine.”

"It's in my coat, sorry."

John's brow furrowed slightly in response to that. Mike had received a call from his daughter not five minutes ago and most definitely did have his phone on him, so-

Mike smiled slightly and tilted his head in the strangers direction. Oh.

"Uh, here. Take mine."

The man turned to face John as he approached, and briefly glanced down the length of his body before taking the offered mobile.

"Oh. Thank you."

"Old friend of mine, John Watson," Mike spoke up.

John found himself shifting in place under the unexpected weight of this man’s gaze. There was something about him, something that had John blinking repeatedly, as if everything had gone too bright all of a sudden.

"Afghanistan or Iraq?"

“Sorry?” He subconsciously gripped his cane tighter.

“Your leg, was it Afghanistan or Iraq?”

John’s heart thudded with disappointment. Couldn’t he just have one acquaintance who could look past that?

He schooled his expression and tried to appear as any normal person would- confused, probably.

“Afghanistan; sorry how did you know that?”

He was answered with a sly smile before the man turned to throw on his coat.

“I play the violin when I’m thinking, sometimes I don’t talk for days on end; would that bother you? Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other.”

John mashed the end of his stick into the floor.

“Who said anything about flatmates?”

“I did. Found a nice little place in central London; together we ought to be able to afford it. _Sorry_ , got to dash, I think I left my riding crop in the mortuary.”

This odd bloke was on the verge of running out the door when John found his words and prevented his escape.

“So that’s it then? We’ve only just met, and we’re going to go look at a flat?”

Frosty eyes looked between him and Mike with a vague, but slightly anxious smile. “Problem?”

“We don’t know a thing about each other, I don’t know where we’re meeting, I don’t even know your name!”

There was that penetrating gaze again, that left John feeling completely exposed and self-conscious. It drifted from John's face down the length of his short body with the somehow soft intensity of a midday sun.

"I know you're an army bot medic. I know you were recently invalided home from Afghanistan. It's obvious you're currently living in a tiny flat because military pensions don’t allow for anything more extravagant, and you’re thinking of a flatshare- Mike brought you to me. I only mentioned this morning that I must be a difficult man to live with.

“Apart from that? You've got a brother but you won't go to him for help, maybe because of his drinking, more likely because he walked out on his wife. Your therapist thinks your limp's psychosomatic, and she's half right, I suppose. It's quite possibly an incompatibility somewhere in the connections. That's enough to be getting on with, don't you think?"

John stood staring at the stranger's expensive shoes, unable to string together a sentence with any meaning. It earned him a smirk and a farewell wink as the man swooped out of the room.

“The name’s Sherlock Holmes, and the address is 221B Baker Street.”

January 30 2010, 19:34 local time

"That... Was amazing."

There was a momentary silence as Sherlock took in that alien comment. He took his attention from the window and felt himself shift a breath closer to John on the seat.

“Do you think so?”

“Yes, it was extraordinary. _Quite_ extraordinary.”

There wasn’t a single trace of lie on his tired face. Sherlock’s heart thudded dully in his chest with blazing hope.

“That’s not what people normally say.”

“What do people normally say?”

“Piss off.”

The two shared a momentary glance before a fuse was lit, and they both dissolved into mirthful giggles in the back of the cab.


	3. Life Story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the first case.

January 31 2010, 01:34 local time

Following a rather embarrassing conversation and meal at an over-enthusiastic chef's Italian restaurant; after jumping over the London rooftops and shooting through labyrinthine alleyways; a drugs bust and a shot through a window, Sherlock noticed his new companion standing at the edge of the scene, nonchalantly looking around as if curious as to what had happened.

“Nice shot.”

“Yeah…” John muttered. “Must have been. The police told me what happened; two pills? Dreadful business.”

Sherlock gave him a scathing look and reached for his hand. He examined his fingers with them raised towards the light.

“You’ll need to get rid of these powder burns as soon as possible. I doubt you’d do any time, but I’d like to avoid the court case.”

John gathered his hand back and into his jacket pocket, warily looking about to make sure nobody had heard. “There’s some repair spray back at the flat, yeah?”

“Probably. We can stop off at Maplin to get some anyway on the way back.”

“It’s half one in the morning, Sherlock. Maplin is closed.”

He waggled his eyebrows at that. “Is it?”

“We’re not breaking into a shop just to get repair spray.”

 

January 31 2010, 02:13 local time

They had just sat down with cheap faux-Chinese meals when Sherlock’s head shot up from his phone as if he had been rudely woken from a deep sleep.

“You haven’t actually said if you’ll be moving in.”

John ate a mouthful of fried rice and looked him over. After swallowing he waited a moment to watch that bizarre mind work before sitting back and replying. “And you haven’t deduced it yet?”

Sherlock sat forward with his hands at either elbow and his neck stretched to cancel out the distance John had made between them.   
"I can read your life story clear as day, John Watson, but I don't read minds."

“Oh, my life story? You hardly brushed the surface earlier. Do tell.”

He tapped his first fingernail on the table once, twice, thinking about how he should answer.

“It’s a miracle that you’re alive.”

John hadn’t been expecting that and had to shift a little in his seat, but he stayed silent and kept his expression as neutral as he could.

“At least 25% of your body is artificial,” Sherlock continued. “That suggests you were close to a mine explosion, or you were hit with a laser blast. You were basically pieced back together again with droid parts.”

A waitress interrupted him by presenting them with a side order of chips, and Sherlock took the opportunity to study the other man while there was a distraction. The waitress disappeared after a few moments and John looked back to him.

“Well? Is that all?”

“No…” His nail dragged across the wood. “Among other things, I know you're interested in… continuing to work with me, and you desperately needed tonight's excitement.”

“How’d you figure?”

“Because before any of this, your leg was out of sync with your brain, but the adrenaline kick from the case gave the wiring the shock it needed.”

“And why would that make me want to move in?”

Sherlock seemed to stumble on that, his brow drawn into a frown as he gazed at John’s face. “You’re not…”

“I mean, yes, obviously I’m staying, but it’s just that…”

The look of relief on Sherlock’s face made the sentence trail away, to be replaced by the brightest smile John had shown in over four months.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a side project for me, so updates will be slow. Sorry.


End file.
